Today, President Obama outlines the final version of the health care bill and urges Congress to bring the plan to a conclusive vote within the next few weeks. The president says this nearly $1 trillion proposal is a compromise plan that combines the best ideas of both Democrats and Republicans. "Everything there is to say about health care has been said, and just about everybody has said it," he said. "Now is the time to make a decision about how to finally reform health care so that it works, not just for the insurance companies, but for America's families and America's businesses." Obama also said that he supported reconcialiation; meaning that changes to the health care bill can be passed only with 51 votes by the Senate. However, it is still unknown what kind of provisions can be approved under reconcialiation, which is reserved for legislation pertaining to the budget. Among other things, Obama's plan would expand Medicare prescription drug coverage, increase federal subsidies to help people buy insurance and give the federal government new authority to block excessive rate increases by health insurance companies. This proposal also included significant reductions in Medicare spending, in part through changes in payments made under the Medicare Advantage program. It also eliminates an unpopular provision in the Senate bill created by Sen. Ben Nelson, a Nebraska Democrat, that exempted that state from paying increased Medicaid expenses. Administration officials say Obama's measure would cut the deficit by $100 billion over the next 10 years. They estimate the total cost of the bill to be $950 billion in the next decade.
I am glad to see that the health care plan is finally getting somewhere after all this time. However, it really makes me wonder where Obama will be getting all this extra money to adjust all Medicare and Medicaid costs to a bare minimum, so Americans can be able to afford these programs. It seems Obama will be using much of tax payers' money to help fund these new and improved programs. This, I am not sure, is going to help Americans all that much at the moment. Especially since we are already paying so much for other programs that may or may not have anything to do with us individually at all. For instance, illegal immigrants or the jobless people who are recieving government aide. What are your thoughts?
Wednesday, March 3, 2010
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2 comments:
It will be interesting to see how the bill does in Congress. Reading over a NYT article (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/04/health/policy/04health.html) on it, I was surprised at some of the quotes from Democrats in Congress, one of whom commented "The White House was taking us for granted, and they shouldn't."
That quote reminded me both of the passages we read about what would be needed to pass the health care bill, which included a passage on the ability of a president to convince members of Congress to vote for important legislations, with LBJ always being the example of an excellent persuader.
This whole situation also reminds me of the Clinton Health Care Plan, especially in that both Clinton and Obama just don't seem to have the strength of support they need from their own parties, let alone members of the Republican Party, and the quote about being taken for granted reminded me Clinton overestimating his power and political capital in the early days of his presidency.
Ideally, Obama would have had the health care bill passed last year, when his political capital was higher. Unfortunately, legislative messes held up the bill, and it might be too late to get a bill passed that will make any substantial changes in our health care system.
I'm not sure about Obama's intent to use reconciliation-- I understand that he might believe it necessary in order to avoid a filibuster, but it seems to be a little more manipulative that this legislation process should need be. Other senators talk about the now misused filibuster (http://senatus.wordpress.com/2010/03/02/mikulski-calls-for-filibuster-reform/), but I don't think the filibuster will every be eliminated because the majority party will eventually change.
Also, giving the federal government the authority to block rates sounds an awful lot like a price ceiling. There aren't many price ceilings in the economy, and it would be interesting to see how setting a price ceiling plays out in concurrence with the subsidies, and whether it would shift the supply and demand curve and change the equilibrium price (it seems like it would).
One reason that I'm not sure exactly how a price ceiling would effect everything though is because it's hard to tell if the health care industry is truly in equilibrium, since there aren't very many available health care options (especially since each state has different requirements-- Ezra Klein had a post on this about 2-3 weeks ago) and the health care industry has some exemptions from anti-trust laws.
Overall, it will be interesting to see how this all plays out. I'm hoping for the best, but with all the changes to the bill and the watering down and conflict over it, coupled in with the unemployment rates and recession, I'm not exactly sure what that is at the moment. But I'm still hoping for it.
And sorry that was so long.
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